Context (3 page)

Hard
blackness pressed heavily upon him from all directions.

Receding now …

Tom struggled awake, panicking,
wondering what had happened.

‘You’re all right, my Lord. A
touch of retrograde amnesia: nothing to worry about.’

A
thing
was bent over him—humanoid,
glistening purple—and then it shed its skin in sections, some kind of
protective suit, revealing a slight man with frizzy red hair, dressed in
ordinary clothes.

‘My name is Dr Xyenquil, sir, and
you exhibited a reaction to the scan -’

As Tom sat up, cold sheets of
blue gel slid from his naked body.

‘- but the crisis is past.’

Tom groaned. His talisman, a
small silver stallion, was hanging from its cord round his throat, and he
clutched at it for comfort.

‘Reaction?’ His mouth felt dry
and fuzzy. ‘What kind of... reaction?’

‘The femtocytes didn’t like being
scanned. But’—a quick, professional smile—‘we can cope. In any other realm,
though…’

Unspoken:
You‘d be dead.

“That’s comforting.’

‘It would help,’ said Xyenquil, ‘if
I could see the original infecting rod.’

‘Sorry. We left it behind.’ Elva
glanced at Tom. ‘It’s a bit far to go and fetch it.’

Elva
had in fact commissioned the femtocytic security, never suspecting that it
would one day be turned against her liege Lord who had disappeared into exile
four SY before, running from the clandestine revolutionary alliance of
LudusVitae in which she, too, was a senior executive officer.

The first two years were a black,
fragmented haze in Tom’s memory, clouded by alcohol and sordid grime, when he
wandered as a broken derelict—there had been a head injury when he fled his
LudusVitae comrades, and perhaps that was the beginning of his destitute
madness—descending through poverty-stricken strata until he found himself at
the edge of a deep-buried sea on the lowest level of all, knowing he could go
no further.

And the slow recovery: working in
Vosie’s cafe, then teaching school, in the peaceful community he had grown to
love. But then, less than sixty days ago, soldiers had come: sent by Lord
Corduven d’Ovraison, whom Tom had known since his days of servitude in Palace
Darinia.

For a thousand years, the nobles’
power structure was upheld by Oracles. Tom, who had devised a way to subvert
Oracular truecasts, might be considered a prime architect of the revolution
which had exploded across Nulapeiron while he tried to live a quiet life far
from the Prima Strata of distant realms, and a struggle which had ceased to
hold any meaning for him.

But there was another noble he
had known for nearly fifteen SY, and it was she, the Lady Sylvana, whom
Corduven was desperate to rescue from a pogrom court.

So fifty days ago, with Corduven’s
commandos, Tom had infiltrated the court, found the beautiful Sylvana suspended
at the centre of a vast spherical hall, trapped in a cruciform structure formed
of conducting rods, held in place by a lev-field, ready to impale her—slowly—when
the court passed sentence.

Then the rescue team had struck,
while Tom, descending from the ceiling, pulled Sylvana from the cruciform, and
got her away just before the thing exploded, long rods lancing in every
direction, impaling hundreds, including Tom.

Since then, even those who had
appeared to be only slightly wounded had perished, screaming in agony, weeping
blood from every orifice, from their very skin, as their bodies inexorably
dissolved.

Every one of them, save Tom,
whose desperately coded countermeasures fought a holding battle, broadcasting
do-nothing commands to the infecting ‘cytes: commands which could not be
sustained.

There
was nothing to do but wait. Xyenquil had implanted antiphages; he told Tom to
go home and rest.

Wearing a new lev-support, like a
cummerbund around his waist—‘Very stylish, my Lord,’ said Elva, not quite
keeping a straight face—Tom walked stiffly to a high balcony overlooking
Os-Vensumbrae Cavernae.

Down below, towers and colonnades
of smartnacre and morphmarble cycled, slow and viscous, through their changing
forms. Beside Tom, Elva, accustomed to more static surroundings, started to
look queasy.

‘Tom? Why don’t we go somewhere
else?’

A
wide black lake, with ice patches floating. Overhead, among twisted
stalactites, snowy edelaces fluttered and glided, hunting for blindmoths.

Away from the quickglass and the
ornate boulevards, this was a raw, natural cavern. The air was cold; wild
fluoro-fungus grew splashed across the ceiling, keeping the air fresh with its
characteristic woody scent.

On the other side of the lake, on
a beach-like scree, a small party moved: a white-bearded man with a staff—a
teacher, perhaps—followed by nine children, wrapped up in red insulsuits
against the cold.

‘Better.’ Tom’s breath steamed. ‘Good
idea, Elva.’

He was leaning on the cane. There
were no lev-fields; the waist-support was rendered useless here.

But Elva was shivering.

‘Are you sure you’re not cold,
Tom?’

He shrugged in reply. If
anything, he was sweating more than earlier.

‘Perhaps we should go back,’ said
Elva. ‘If you’re getting a fev—’

A sharp cry echoed across the icy
lake, and Elva crouched by reflex in a combat stance.

Edelace.

A white shape had dropped from
the ceiling, and covered a small, struggling boy like a lacy shawl. But this
was deadly, a hunting edelace, laden with toxins.

The old man moved surprisingly
fast, swinging his staff round to point at the boy. Then a strange dark fire—
black
flames—sprouted from the staffs metal-shod point.

He touched the edelace with that
negative fire, and it shrivelled.

‘Are you OK?’ called Elva.

For a moment Tom thought she
meant him. The sight of black flames had struck a deep, frightening chord
inside him: a wave of cold fear. It dissipated, leaving a strange fatigue in
its wake.

What does it mean?

Tom stood swaying, trying to
remain steady. Perhaps it was a fever: infection and counteragents waging war
inside his body.

What am I supposed to remember?

Across the lake, the old man gave
no sign of having heard Elva. He used his staff to carry the wounded edelace,
draped across the tip, down to the lake’s edge. Then he flicked it onto the
black waters, left it floating where it might regrow.

Strange enough. Yet it was the
manner of the party’s leaving which affected Tom profoundly.

The nine boys were seated here
and there, on flat stones or shale, staring in different directions. Chewing
food, acting like normal children of their age, if perhaps a little quiet.

But as the old man turned away
from the lake, all nine boys stood in perfect unison. Silently, blank-faced,
they formed a single file. As the old man led the way, using his cane to help
him up the slope, the nine boys followed soundlessly, climbing without effort.

Into a dark tunnel mouth, they
disappeared one by one. It was impossible to tell which had been attacked by
the edelace.

Then the silent boys were gone.

‘Wait
and see,’
Dr
Xyenquil had told him.
‘That’s all we can do.’

‘And if your antiphages don’t
work?’

There had been no comforting
reply.